The Seventh Avenger

Burdened With Glorious Purpose

All I really heard as I pushed toward the lab was the announcement and the sound of agents stomping down the hallways, some carrying large boxes. I had to keep stepping left to right to avoid being knocked over by the rushing people. As I walked past a corner, Hill, Coulson, and Director Nick Fury himself were walking towards me. Without even thinking about it, I pressed my back against the wall and focused on their conversation. They were heading in the same direction as me, and I caught some of the last words between the three of them.

"Sir, is that really a priority right now?" Maria asked.

"Until such a time as the world ends, we will act as though it intends to spin on. Clear out the tech below. Every piece of phase two on a truck and gone." Fury ordered. Maria walked away after a muttered "yes sir.", and Nick pushed open the doors to Selvig's lab. I glanced around quickly to make sure no one was around to see me, and when I decided it was all clear, I slipped through the heavy doors before they swung shut.

"... Low levels of gamma radiation. Nothing harmful." Doctor Erik Selvig was saying.

"That can be harmful." Fury replied, a dangerous undertone to his voice. I pressed my back against the far wall of the lab, making myself unnoticeable.

"Where's agent Barton?" Fury asked.

"The hawk?" Selvig rolled his eyes. "Up in his nest."

Crap. Clint would have already seen me.  He slid down a rope in the corner of the room, and as he walked to the two men standing in the middle of the room, he said "Cassidy." Nodding his head in acknowledgement, completely ignoring the wide eyed hand gestures I was making at him. I looked him in the eyes once more, slowly dragging my finger across my throat in an I will kill you motion, before walking over to the men with a fake cheery smile.

"Gentlemen." I said chirpily.

"Moran, what are you doing in here?" Nick asked with a frustrated sigh.

"I just wanted to know what was going on! The whole building's been evacuated, and I want to know why." I reply, folding my arms over my chest, a determined look on my face. They shrugged and continued their conversation. I walked over to one of the computers a blonde female scientist was working at. I glanced at the screen. And, oh. That did not look good at all.

"Doctor, its spiking again." The woman called out to Selvig, poking her head out from behind the computers. I walked back over to the pulsing ball of blue light called the Tesseract. I was stood on the small path-like thing directly in front of it, and I was about 17 feet away from it before it really started to spike. The whole building shook, causing me to fall inelegantly onto my butt.

The tesseract pulsed and glowed and emitted a weird noise.

"Cass! Get down!" Clint yelled at me. I rolled off the walkway and onto the floor, covering my face with my arm as a bright light shone through the room. I kept my eyes shut, and my head down. I wasn't injured thankfully, but I was a little on edge. I could hear the noise of the energy and I felt a huge gust of wind move me a couple of inches across the floor. The noise stopped, and I finally lifted my head. The room was messy, but there was one significant difference. A dark figure crouched on the platform a few feet away from me. Guards on either side of me walked slowly towards him, Guns raised. Slowly, the man lifted his head to look around the room. His long, jet black hair was slicked back, and looked greasy. He was wearing a strange green, black and gold outfit, almost like armour. He wasn't from around here. No one from this planet wears clothes like that.

He stood up, a sharp pointed sceptre in his hand. It glowed an odd blue colour, the same colour as the Tesseract.

"Sir, please put down the spear!" Nick called to the man. The stranger looked down at it, then back up to us, smirking. Oh dear. This was not going to end well. At all.

With that, he shot a blue ray of light out of the sceptre and Clint pushed the director out of the way just in time to avoid either of them being hit. He walked over to one of the guards and tapped him on the chest with his staff. The guards eyes turned black, then went an unearthly blue. The other agents shot at the man, but the bullets meagerly deflected off his armour. I summoned a golden dagger into my hand, and threw it with precision at his back, but he moved faster than I had expected and hit the dagger out of it's path, the dagger disintegrating into thin air. He turned to me with a sneer and shot a light beam at me, clipping my shoulder with the white-hot energy. I collapsed to the floor, my hand pressing against the burn on my shoulder as it healed. The man then began to shoot beams of light around the room at random so I went still, and pretended to be incapacitated. I vaguely heard conversation, but I was concentrating on something else. A plan to get out of this room without getting killed.

Just as I got a grip and looked up, Clint's eyes turned blue.

"CLINT!" I screamed. Everyone in the room turned towards me. Well...crap. Without thinking, I turned around and ran out of the door. Just as I reached the door, a gunshot sounded. I ducked using my super-speed, and the bullet tore through the wall on my left. Looking at it in shock, I began to run towards the parking garage, knowing that's where Maria would be. Unfortunately, I had had to take the long way round, and once I reached the vehicle bay, Clint and the others were already there getting into cars.

"Maria! Clint is..." I yelled, but Clint had swung up his gun, Maria rolled out of the way of the bullets, but I had to throw my arms in front of myself. I only just summoned the forcefield before the bullets hit it. Wincing slightly as I felt each of the bullets hit the forcefield as if it was a far off extension of my own flesh and blood, I moved slowly forwards. The driver took off at breakneck speed, and Clint turned his attention to the road as they sped away.

"Cassidy! Come on!" Maria yelled at me, already jumping into one of the S.H.I.E.L.D jeeps. I got in after her, and we sped into pursuit of the car in front of us. The wind whipped my ponytail around my face, and I held on to my seatbelt as we sped down the tunnel.

Through the windshield, I could just make out the two cars with flashing lights. We drove down the low exit tunnel. The tunnel was lit, but poorly. Two other cars were on our flanks, but one was soon shot down by one of Loki's beams, which blocked the second cars path. The tunnel split into two paths, Clint and the others took one, we took the other. I gave Maria an are you out of your mind?! look.

"Just trust me!" she said, her voice raised so I could hear her over the noise of the wind. We came out back onto the original road, in front of the other cars. Maria pushed the handbrake down, and the car did a U-turn so we were now facing the car Clint drove. They were practically pushing our jeep now.

Quickly, Maria pulled out her gun and began to shoot at Clint. I didn't want to see Clint hurt, but I knew maria would only shoot to incapacitate not to kill. He was like an older brother to me, having cared for me when I was first found on the doorstep of a SHIELD facility. I wanted them stopped, but I also didn't want her to hurt Clint. The shots stopped, and Clint's car pushed our car a bit more to the side, eventually getting past us. Maria steered us skillfully towards the end of the tunnel.

Behind us, I could hear a loud rumbling noise and panicked. Turning my head, i saw that the tunnel was collapsing behind us. the two cars that had been tailing us had already been crushed under the collapsing tunnel. The falling debris was quickly gaining on our jeep, and i tried to call out a warning to Maria.

"Mari-"

The tunnel over us collapsed. I threw a forcefield up over our heads faster than you can say 'Loki is a huge jerk'. I yelled as the cascading debris came into contact with the forcefield and bounced around the car. Thankfully, only half of the car was under the wreckage of the tunnel.

"Cassidy! Cass are you allright?!" Maria called from the other side of the stones.

"oh, I'm just peachy! you know, other than being trapped under a ton of rocks!!"

"Can you move the rock that blocked us? I'll help." It was almost pitch black other than the glow from the force field, and i was getting claustrophobic. With Maria's help, the rock in the middle of the car was moved, and I slowly eased my way out from under the fallen debris.

I took deep breaths, as i brushed off the dust and dirt on my once clean clothes.

"Thank goodness you're alright." Maria said as she gave me a once over for injuries. Alright? Physically i was, but mentally? No where near alright. Clint had been taken, the place I had called home for 13 years was destroyed, and as of right then, we were at war.